


Perchance to Dream

by anon-j-anon (Anon)



Series: This is what I see [4]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-02
Updated: 2013-06-02
Packaged: 2017-12-13 18:39:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/827538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anon/pseuds/anon-j-anon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Imagine Rome without the Forum.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perchance to Dream

**Author's Note:**

> to mazaher

We are Romans.

Brilliant builders and brilliant at war, descendants of wolves and the remnants of Troy. We were born in ashes and thrown as seed into the sea. We drift, for as long as it takes.

We are Romans.

Brilliant soldiers and brilliant in weapons, we know all the mechanics of building an empire. The aqueducts and bridges, the roads and walls-- an army does not always fight for planets. Romans understood this, that the stitches in roads bind stronger than prisons.

We are soldiers, engineers, mechanics.

We are searching for Greece.

Imagine Rome without Roman architecture. Imagine Rome without Roman law. Imagine Rome without sculpture, mosaic, letters. Imagine Rome as we are now-- only soldiers, engineers, mechanics.

The perfection of their empire was in the union of stone and air, bone and salt, sweat and laughter.

Imagine Rome without the Forum.

I was wrong in assuming only Greeks would wake us. That only Greeks would find us and take the risk of speaking to us.

Instead I found Starfleet. And the horror of working like a slave to build their warships while they opened the capsules, one by one, opened the bodies, one by one, to find what we are made of. There were 114 in our number. Now we are 73.

I did not lie to James Tiberius Kirk. I took my crew and my ship and recognized war when I saw it. They would never have let us go. Starfleet would hunt us down in any scenario-- better to mortally wound them before they exterminated us.

Kirk was willing to listen. But I could not risk the life of my crew to his mercy.

Spock--

I will give you my blood, willingly, if you will give me my crew. A life for a life.

I will give you my blood and I ask you, as a Roman, to put me back to sleep. What you do with us afterward, I leave in your hands. But this is all I ask.

Spock.

You are in my mind.

You have seen the truth.

You are speaking to me.

I am a Roman, and tired of war. The sack of Troy. Imagine Aeneas, twice saved by gods, staring into darkness. Death, space, the sea.

I will give you my blood.

Spock--

His mistake was making your life the center of his principles.

Your mistake was not seeing it.

 

 


End file.
